by Agence France-Presse
SAVANNAH, Georgia—President Barack Obama on
Tuesday unveiled plans to give hefty reimbursements to U.S. homeowners who make
home improvements to conserve
energy.
The president urged Congress to approve the plans to give a shot in the arm
to the lagging U.S. construction industry, one of the sectors hardest hit by the
economic slump.
“If a homeowner decides to do work on his or her house—to put in new
windows, to replace a heating unit, to insulate an attic, to redo a roof—the
homeowner would be eligible for a rebate from the store or the contractor for 50
percent of the cost of each upgrade up to $1,500,” the president explained in
remarks delivered at Savannah Technical College in
Georgia. “If you decided to retrofit your whole house to greatly reduce your
energy use, you’d be eligible for a rebate of up to $3,000.”
Obama said Americans would see big savings in their energy bills, as well as
at the cash register. “These are big incentives,” he said. “You’d get these
rebates instantly from the hardware store or the
contractor … right there when you paid.”
Obama said the lower renovation costs could lead to new hiring in the
construction trades. “You’ve got a lot of skilled contractors ready to go. And
that, in turn, means that the contractors start hiring some of these folks who
may have been laid off,” he said, adding that the program also would stimulate
U.S. manufacturing since “a lot of these materials are made right here in
America.”
“These are companies ready to take on new customers—they’re workers eager
to do new installations and renovations, factories ready to produce new building
supplies,” the president said. “All we’ve got to do is create the incentives to
make it happen.”
The rebate program in its broad outlines is modeled after last year’s popular
“Cash for Clunkers” trade-in program, which sparked nearly 700,000 auto sales. That plan offered owners of aging cars and
trucks incentives of up to $4,500 toward a new, more-efficient vehicle, a scheme
meant to help boost the struggling auto industry while helping the environment. The U.S. Transportation
Department reported that by the end of the program late last year, car
dealerships had submitted nearly $3 billion in rebate applications. Critics
said, however, that the program added to government debt and merely sped up auto
sales that would have occurred anyway.
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